October is fast approaching and it's going to be a busy one for The Sharp Darts with at least three big gigs coming up and plenty of other work to be doing, it's going to be big!

Boy do we have a month ahead of us, straight out of the blocks we're going to be playing our first London gig. What a way to start both the month and gigging in London, by playing at one of the best venues in town, IndigO2 in The O2!

As I'm sure you're all aware, we came through the Surface Festival Regional Showcase at the end of August and will take part in the International Showcase on the 1st October along with 20 other bands that have battled their way through from across not only the country, but the world. We'll be posting this week with all the details of the other bands involved so watch this space!

If we place 1st-3rd, then we'll be quickly adding to our gig schedule as one of the prizes is a tour, which will take place over the following week in London, Birmingham and Manchester, we'll tell you all about it should we make to the tour!

The Sharp Darts will be heading down to London to play the Surface Festival International Showcase at IndigO2 on 1st October. In this series we'll be looking at the bands that have made it through from each region.

The Surface Festival is split into regions across the UK and abroad, in this post we'll be looking at the bands who made it through from the south region.

Over the next week we'll be looking at all of the bands that have made it through the West, North, Wales, Scotland, Barcelona and of course, Midlands regions.

Here are how the results panned out for the victors of the South Regional Showcase:

Last weekend The Sharp Darts played their first outside gig at Bearwood Shuffle in Lightwoods Park along with other local artists and headlined by Aziz Ibrahim & Dalbir Singh Rattan!

This was a gig with a true rock & roll / the show must go on mentality, we arrived just after 1pm to find out that there had been a few problems with the PA that meant sound check was running late. ~We were happy to check before playing as we were playing acoustic and it's not too much arranging between the three of us, as long as we can vaguely hear each other, it's not too much of a problem.

Well, the blog has been a little quiet since the Surface Festival Regional Showcase a couple of weeks back. Believe it or not, we're still buzzing from that gig, it's gonna take a while to better.

We have been bust, which is half the reason I haven't got round to putting up a post, with the International Showcase looming in just 10 days time, we've had a lot of organising to do. With the coach to sort out, hotel and train ride for ourselves, logistics of getting all our gear down there, we've had plenty to keep us on our toes.

At the same time we've been working on new songs in the practice room each week, we've booked up a couple of acoustic shows to keep us fresh as well as making improvements on our website, re-ordering merchandise, promoting "Shoes Off" and trying to find some time to work on our next recording project. It's been an intense September so far and isn't looking like slowing down!

The Sharp Darts have made it through to the International Showcase and final of Surface Festival 2011!

After what was an awesome gig at Birmingham O2 Academy main stage, the judges voted favourably to put The Sharp Darts through this round.

Judges Alex Baker - Kerrang Radio, Damien Wilkes - Popular Music Lecturer and Producer and Micky Dave - Black Stafford Promotions gave us scores of 19 - 16 - 20, giving us a total of 55, the highest judges score of the night. Unfortunately, we were only 10th in the text voting, giving us a total score of 65 putting us third overall behind Already Gone (72) and The Pargeters (66). Thank you judges!